Tent Tenements: Modular System Connects Multi-Unit Tents

If ‘tent cities’ are defined by population density and small living spaces, one might characterize this creation as a kind of ‘tent suburb’ prototype by comparison – or a sprawling tent estate or Tent McMansion for large plots of camp-worthly land.

Then again, the interconnectivity makes it almost like a set of tent townhouses, too, or a sideways residential tent tower. But analogies and comparisons aside, the idea and its realization are superb: a complex of connected tents that each serves one or more functions within the larger whole.

At its heart is the decagon tent, a communal hub and origin point from which links to five other nodes can be extended.

These nodes, in turn, include a two-side-accessible link screen that can host up to sixteen people for dinner, a smaller terminal link dome that sleeps four and a car joint tarp that turns your SUV into an extra room.

Created by logos, the invention was a shortlisted finalist this year’s Japan Good Design Award in Tokyo for its creative redeployment of an age-old static prototype, adding flexibility to convention to open up a world of new possibilities.

So what comes next? A tent castle in the sky? Sounds fantastical, but it may not too far from the mark after all.